A couple of years ago, Mark Muro, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, noticed, along with some of his colleagues, that when politicians and businesspeople debated how the U.S. could be more economically competitive, the conversations tended to focus on promoting certain innovative industries. But, more often than not, the discussions said as much about who held the microphone as they did about what mattered for growth; that is, people kept talking about the industries in which they were involved, instead of figuring out what the most innovative industries had in common and how their successes could be replicated.
